by Russ Thomas
“I have work.”
The man smiles. “Another time.” This time it stops just short of a question.
Tyler tries, just for a moment, to summon up their future: trips to IKEA to pick out furniture, lazy Sunday mornings with the paper listening to the kids playing, brunch with the lesbians. It’s a what if dream that doesn’t quite take shape. Someone else’s dream. “Look,” he says, “this was great but, well . . .” He shrugs and leaves it there.
“I’m Oscar,” says the perfect man with his rich blackberry voice. He doesn’t seem in the least perturbed by the knock-back.
“And I’m out of here.” Tyler leaves the man smiling at him from the bed and lets himself out without another word.
* * *
—
He has been at his desk for no more than a few moments when he realizes something’s wrong. It’s too quiet. He’s used to working alone by now. His desk is tucked at the end of a small cul-de-sac formed by the plasterboard wall of the inner office used exclusively by the Murder Team. It faces the outside wall. There’s a partially frosted window to his right that lets in a small amount of natural light, but all that can be seen out of it is the painted brick of the co-op building opposite. He has to turn almost 180 degrees and crane his neck round the corner just to see another human being, let alone talk to one.
And it isn’t as though many are queuing up to talk to him anyway. There’s another barrier that separates him from his colleagues, something more robust than the flimsy plasterboard of the Murder Room. It isn’t always a lack of evidence or suspects that leads to a case being shelved; sometimes it’s simple incompetence. More than once he has been responsible for sending one of his colleagues to stand in front of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It makes him less than popular, but then, he’s not here to win friends.
There’s usually background noise, though, a hum of conversation that accompanies his working day that’s conspicuous in its absence today. He stands up and moves along what he has heard certain droll colleagues refer to as “The Tyler Wing” and back into the office proper. There are one or two industrious types tapping away at keyboards, and in the Murder Room a young detective constable whose name he can’t remember—Linda? Brenda?—is wiping down whiteboards with the enthused energy of someone given a minor responsibility. He’s considering the best way to approach her—Carla! Yes, he’s sure it’s Carla—when his mobile rings.
“Adam?”
“Hi,” he begins, “how’s your head?” but at the same time she says, “It’s Sally-Ann here.” They both stop. He waits for her to go on, but she doesn’t. He starts to say, “Did you stay much longer last—” and she says, “Have you heard what’s happened—” They both fall silent again. This time he’s determined to wait her out.
“Adam?” she asks after a moment. “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” he says quickly.
There’s a lengthy pause and then, just at the point at which he decides he’ll have to break the silence, she goes on. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but then you’ll hear soon enough anyway.” She’s virtually whispering.
This time he cuts her off. “Sally-Ann? What the fuck’s going on?”
Another lengthy pause. He can hear her breathing down the phone. “They’ve found him,” she says. “They’re saying they’ve finally found Gerald Cartwright.”
* * *
—
Tyler drives on automatic, his arms and legs controlling the car semi-autonomously while his mind is fixed elsewhere. The place he is looking for is right on the force’s boundary, at the edge of the Peak District; one village further on and Gerald Cartwright would have been Derbyshire’s problem. The turnoff isn’t easy to find; he passes through numerous hamlets, each identical to the last. He avoids using the satnav, having learned from bitter experience that it’s just as likely to send him to the wrong side of the valley. Eventually he spots a weathered signpost at the roadside, its cracked face strangled with weeds. He takes the sharp left turn without bothering to slow, and the wheels of the CID Vectra bump alarmingly across scrubland before settling onto the narrow strip of tarmac that winds ahead of him. After a couple of miles, the road dips suddenly and the car jolts its way violently across the ford of a narrow stream. He eases off the accelerator as the first houses begin to appear. A white sign welcomes him to the village of Castledene and asks him to PLEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY.
It isn’t difficult to find the church; the road runs right past it, and a sign next to the gate, its pale blue paint peeling into the grass below, declares that ALL SOULS ARE WELCOME. Tyler brakes, stops, and abandons the car halfway up a grass verge. He steps into the quiet peace of a sunny morning in the countryside, birdsong, the wind rustling the autumn leaves. No traffic noise, no sirens, none of the comforting hum of the city. It’s unnatural. How the hell does anyone sleep out here?
He checks the address on his phone. He’s looking for a vicarage, but the only buildings he can see other than the church itself are a row of four ’80s-built semidetached houses that fail to meet the description he has of a dilapidated Victorian mansion. But the third house sports a small brass plaque: THE VICARAGE. There are no signs of activity. No crime scene.
He has a sudden feeling someone is watching him and looks up to see an elderly man standing in the churchyard. The man stares for a moment and then turns away, disappearing behind the churchyard wall. Tyler climbs the grassy bank, and the man comes back into view. He’s raking up cut grass from between the headstones, a half-smoked roll-up hanging from his bottom lip. Behind him a metal cage crackles with burning garden waste.
When the man speaks, he does so without looking up. “You want the Old Vicarage. Follow the road round, and it’s the first gate you come to on the left.” He gestures over his shoulder with a grubby thumb, and now Tyler sees the strobe of blue emergency lights coming from somewhere behind the church. The man draws deeply on the tab end, filling his lungs before exhaling slowly. Now that he’s closer, the man doesn’t look as old as he’d first thought. Late fifties, perhaps.
“Thank you, Mr. . . . ?”
“Wentworth. Joe.” He makes a show of pulling some weeds from between the stones in the wall. He fails to make eye contact. “Police, is it?”
“DS Tyler.” He shows the man his warrant card and tries his best at a disarming smile. He isn’t very good at them.
“Found him, then.” It’s not quite a question. Wentworth throws the last of his grass onto the smoking heap, the burning stub still clasped tightly between puckered lips.
“You knew Mr. Cartwright?”
“Aye,” Wentworth growls. “Not many as don’t know each other in this place.”
Tyler suppresses a smile and wonders if Joe Wentworth has ever heard the word stereotype. Perhaps he doesn’t hide it well enough, though, because suddenly Wentworth is gathering together tools and dropping them one by one into his wheelbarrow with a reverberating clang.
“I’ll be getting on then.” He raises the handles on his barrow and starts toward the church. Tyler considers calling him back, questioning him further, but decides to let him go. Maybe he’s got something he wants to say, or maybe he’s just a nosy old local. Either way, he’ll be easy enough to find later.
He leaves the car where it is and walks the few hundred yards round the bend to the gateway of the Old Vicarage. A handful of uniformed officers guard the entrance, a human dam built to keep at bay the washed-up detritus of journalists, TV crews, and curious neighbors. He doesn’t recognize any of the officers, but this outer cordon is easy enough to breach. He puts his shoulder to the gathered masses without bothering to excuse himself and flashes his warrant card at the uniforms. They acknowledge him with a nod and step apart, lifting the tape that stretches across the driveway for him to duck under.
The gates have fallen loose, but someone has cleared a path by dragging them aside
and propping them against the bushes. Tyler feels the cordon snap shut behind him as the mob renews their questioning of the uniformed officers. Ahead of him, along a wide gravel driveway, a large Victorian house sits among the oak trees, its red bricks pitted and enveloped in some sort of vine. At some point in the past there must have been a fire, and the black scorch marks are still visible above each of the broken windows, like excessive eye shadow. There’s something familiar about the place, like it might have been used for a period television drama. But then, it would be familiar. Six years ago the place was headline news.
The cluster of vehicles to the right of the driveway identifies the marshaling point. Among them, a workman’s van, half its contents spilled out in front of the house. There’s a mobile incident room as well, and more uniforms, arranged to form an inner cordon around the house itself. DCI Jordan has certainly pulled out all the stops on this one.
The young uniformed police constable guarding the entrance raises a delicate, shaky hand as he approaches. “Sorry, sir. No one else in. DI’s orders.”
There’s something about the girl’s temerity that irritates him. He raises his warrant card. “DS Tyler,” he says. He keeps moving, but somehow she manages to insert herself between him and the doorway again.
“Yes, sir. I know who you are. He did say no one, sir. I’m sure if you were to report to the incident room . . .”
Her backbone impresses him, but he doesn’t have time for delays. “I’ll take the responsibility.”
Still she hesitates. “Is that an order, sir?”
“If you like.”
“So you’ll be speaking up for me, will you? When the DI kicks me arse?”
He changes tack. “What’s your name?”
“Rabbani,” she says.
“Constable Rabbani. It’s good to meet you. Now fuck off out of my way!”
The girl is out of options. She sighs but steps to the side, allowing him to climb the half-dozen steps that lead to the front door of the house. He feels her eyes boring into his back.
He crosses the woodworm-riddled threshold, entering a hallway patterned with red and black tiles. The plaster on the walls hangs loose, the flocked wallpaper holding it together as best it can. In places it bulges with fallen brickwork while in others it’s dark and flaky, charred by fire. A wooden staircase leads up to the next floor, its banisters twisted and blackened. To his right, the floor has given way so that getting into the living room now takes a small leap of faith. Beyond the hole, a team of white-clad scene-of-crime officers are combing through the building’s past. He steps across to join them.
The house has clearly been empty for years, but someone has been here more recently than that. Village kids poking round, smoking dope perhaps. He sees the remains of a small fire on the floor; around it a few dozen cigarette butts and spent matches. Much of the room is smoke blackened, and parts of it are water damaged. Curiously, some parts are almost pristine: a standard lamp, dusty, its red shade unfaded; the curtains hanging across the patio doors at the far end could be brushed off and made good. It’s as though the fire has moved through the room, picking and choosing its targets with care.
Again he has that sensation of being watched, and he searches the room, half-expecting the country bumpkin gardener to appear from behind the sofa. Then he sees the portrait above the mantelpiece, a small framed oil painting of the head and shoulders of a man. The man is wrapped in a dark coat pulled tight to the neck, around which is tucked a loose red scarf. His face is incongruously large. The gray skin hanging in loose folds round his cheeks and jowls makes him look both fat and malnourished at the same time. Here and there are brushstrokes of oranges and reds that might be the distant reflection of light on the horizon. The eyes of the man in the picture are wide and bright and mad. It is these eyes that follow him as he moves through the room. There’s a signature in the bottom right-hand corner, hard to make out, and a plaque built into the base of the frame that gives him the painting’s title: The Fire Watcher.
The frame is much smaller than the rectangle of paler wall that surrounds it, indicating that another picture once hung here, something that must have been moved after the fire. Something wider than it was tall . . . landscape, rather than portrait. He scans the room and finds the likely candidate propped against a nearby armchair, a dull watercolor of the Peak District. He pulls out his mobile and snaps a photo of it.
One of the SOCOs glances up at him.
“Has anyone moved this?” he asks.
The man stares at him blankly.
“You need to dust it for prints. The one on the wall, too.”
The SOCO’s eyes open wide, and his mouth falls open in mock astonishment. “Sure, mate,” he says. “Good thing we’ve got you experts round. I’d never ’ave thought o’ that.” He turns back to his work, shaking his head.
“Tyler!”
The man who speaks is standing at the edge of the hole in the doorway, his finger tapping out a drumroll on the mobile in his hand. “What the fuck are you doing to my crime scene?”
Detective Inspector Jim Doggett is a wiry stick figure of a Yorkshireman held together almost entirely with nervous energy. He never stops moving. Pacing, tapping, head nodding; never still, not even for a fraction of a second. Tyler’s grandmother would have called it St. Vitus’s dance, but it isn’t medical as far as he knows. They call Doggett the Yorkshire Terrier, and not for the first time Tyler wonders what his nickname is. Then he decides he doesn’t want to know.
“The usual, sir. Making friends, contaminating evidence, that sort of thing.” He pauses for a moment, aware he’s on shaky ground. “I was told you needed everyone you could get.”
Doggett barks out a laugh that causes the SOCOs to stop briefly in their work and look up. “Your sort of help I can do without.” Still, despite his words he appears to be considering the idea. Then he says, “Since you’ve made the effort, I’ve no objection to an extra pair of eyes.” He inclines his head, beckoning for Tyler to follow, and disappears back down the hallway.
Tyler leaps back across the hole just in time to see Doggett ducking through a small doorway under the stairs. It opens onto another staircase, this one made of stone. As he follows the DI down, his arm brushes mold from the wall, dislodging a snowfall of musty flakes. At the bottom of the steps the room opens into a cellar that stretches a good way under the house. At some stage it has been used for storing wine, and many of the bottles still survive, the dark-green glass almost blackened with soot. There are props supporting the beams above, relieving the house of its decades-long struggle to hold itself together. Huge, freestanding arc lamps have been set up by the SOCO team, and the cellar bustles with activity as photos are taken and forensic experts go about their painstaking science.
“Right,” Doggett says, all business. “House has been empty six years, as I’m sure you’re aware. Monday morning, the builders move in.” He gestures to the props holding up the ceiling. “Yesterday, they come down here, knock a wall down, and bang! Shock of their bloody lives. Elliot reckons he’s been there a while. Smart money’s on the former owner of the house.”
“Gerald Cartwright.”
Doggett nods and beckons Tyler to follow him over to the rear wall. The activity is busier here. The pathologist, Elliot, is a reedlike Geordie who reeks of stale tobacco. Tyler keeps his distance and holds his breath.
“Have you had your breakfast this morning, Detective Sergeant?”
He shakes his head.
“Probably for the best, man.”
The wall is built of cinder blocks and cuts across the back of the stairs. It’s obviously a late addition to the house, not part of the original construction. An irregular hole has been smashed out of it and the corpse lies half exposed in the rubble, caught in the harsh glare of an arc lamp. The three of them are forced to crouch by the descending beams of the ceiling. The body’s litt
le more than a skeleton, its remaining skin pulled thinly over its frame. Doggett, on his left, is watching for his reaction, so he determines not to give one. Elliot, to his right, has a yellowy roll-up tucked behind his ear. “From the clothes and general size,” he says, pointing, “I’d say it was a man.” He gestures to the wasted hands that jut awkwardly above the cinder blocks. “There’s enough damage to the fingernails to make me think he was probably alive when he went in.”
The stench of Elliot’s tobacco breath makes Tyler shudder again. “What about the fire?” he asks.
Elliot looks at the cellar walls. “Could’ve killed him. He’d have been protected from most of the heat, but the smoke, mind . . .” He leaves the sentence unfinished. “Depends how soon the fire started after he went in, like.”
“Could he have been buried there after the fire?” Doggett asks.
Elliot shakes his head, and the roll-up slides loose but somehow doesn’t fall. He points at the rubble at their feet. “The bricks are soot covered, same as everything else. He was in there first, all right. This is interesting, though.” He moves closer to the body and indicates a dark patch at the back of the skull. “Blunt trauma. Crushed the skull. Not necessarily fatal, but without medical attention . . .” Again he trails off.
“So,” says Doggett without feeling, “it’s a jolly murder then.”
Elliot looks up at him. “Unless he sealed himself in, Jim, and I can’t see a trowel in his hand, can you?” Elliot turns back to the body, ignoring Doggett’s scowl. “Hopefully we’ll know more when we get him out.”
Tyler stares at the ragged fingers on the corpse’s hands. “Forgetting the fire for a minute, and assuming he was alive when he went in there, how long would it have taken him to die?”
Elliot blows out his cheeks. “Hard to say. If he had been healthy, with plenty of water, food, and oxygen . . . in theory anything up to nine or ten days.”
“Jesus!” Doggett scratches absently at his stubbled chin. “Ten days?”